A friend has just had identical twins. Everyone had wished her luck for the birth, but I wished her luck for afterwards. She confessed that her recovery worried her and I said I wasn’t referring to the post-partum, but the forty years afterwards. That life changes you is the gospel truth and although it is commonly accepted, it never finds its true dimensions. What I mean is that life doesn’t change you, it transforms into something else. To do  bobbin lace to be able continue working, or going out, or maintaining relationships with your partner (to use a euphemism) is all compensated for when your child looks at or talk to you, demonstrating that the miracle of life is not reduced to the magic instant in which the sperm finds the egg and fertilises it. I though about it yesterday, when my daughter wanted to teach me how to poo in the potty. It’s very easy, mum, she said, close your eyes hard and that’s it. And she, who had until that moment had refused to use anything but her nappy, made me cry with laughter and emotion because she demonstrated what I have just been writing, that her life is the miracle of growing up. In the large and the small, in the twee,  in the scatological, in everything. And luckily, it lasts forever.